


words we'll never take back

by meritmut



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, E/R/É Shipping Festival, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Multi, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Les Mis drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. into rivers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone knows gods are insatiable. (For the E/R/E shipping festival.)

She’s always loved to dance, though it’s true she’s never taken a lesson in her life. She learned in earliest girlhood with her sister for a partner: when they were children she’d twirl Azelma through the inn, promenading to their own hummed tunes (or sometimes, while he still did that sort of thing, their father would sing for them) and later she’d discovered Montparnasse hid a talent for the smooth, but she was a teenager before she even realised that people _could_ take lessons. They could pay to be taught something that to Éponine is the most natural thing in the world - to move with the tide of her own thoughts, to follow her feet where her words can’t go…she’s never thought of dancing as something formal, a skill or a sport: there’s nothing to be learned from spinning in the rain or swaying under the moonlight in ‘Parnasse’s arms, no great secret to her body’s remembrance of steps that aren’t so much ingrained in her as part of her, nothing to it other than she simply loves to move…

Especially tonight. Tonight, with the low strumming of the guitar and Courfeyrac’s lovely voice weaving a muted melody in the sweet-scented air, her feet itch to dance.

She’s been lazy this weekend, not going further than the shop down the road and spending most of her time curled up watching Pixar movies while running through her boss’ accounts (she has a good head for numbers, and it’s been her saving grace when her people skills in the shop leave much to be desired), and now with work done and the slow siren song of wine in her veins, she _needs_ to move - she virtually ran here to meet the boys tonight, but she was barely out of breath when she arrived. It’s not enough.

Her bare arms tingle with the excess energy and Éponine thinks she might combust if she doesn’t set it loose somehow - if she doesn’t find a release she’ll gasp and sigh and turn into rivers, spilling over in a white-hot explosion of subaqueous starlight (that’s how it feels: stars beneath her skin, shivering and pressing against her insides), it’s hard to breathe but she can feel her heart beating a swift march in her chest and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt so brilliantly, stupidly, ridiculously _alive_.

Without a word she hops from the stool and leans over the bar to grab the bottle of dark wine and fill her glass, turning back to the room and her friends - all of whom are transfixed watched Grantaire play and Courfeyrac sing. They all seem relaxed, quiescent, save for Éponine herself, though it’s tempting to disturb their contentment with a declaration that a song demands a dance and so does she. When Marius’ eyes flick to her expectantly, noticing the erratic pattern her fingers tap against her leg, she ignores him: his dancing is worse than his cooking and probably twice as lethal.

It’s to the darkness beyond the terrace that her own gaze goes, and after a moment Enjolras emerges from the shadows, a faint smile curving across his lips as he gives the slightest head-jerk, beckoning her out into the night. He’s been out there for a while now, most likely stargazing or pondering or simply just avoiding their company. Éponine wouldn’t put it past him.

She’s certain none of the others can see him, as he stands where the curve of the stairs shields him from the room in general and so she feels no compunction for rising - ignoring her friends if they look her way - and slipping out into the beer garden, where the glow of the lamps can’t quite hold back the pervasive night.

Back indoors she knows Marius will be turning his attentions to Cosette, where everyone knows they belonged anyway.

“Are you avoiding us?” enquires Éponine as she perches herself on one of the tables, its flaking russet paint dulled to charcoal-grey in the lunar light. “What’ve we done this time?”

“It’s quiet out here,” Enjolras murmurs by way of explanation, and it’s enough to appease her curiosity. He settles beside her and stretches his legs out in front of him, his hands falling to the tabletop at either side of his thighs. If he were to move the littlest finger of his right hand just an inch or so to one side, he could touch Éponine’s own; he doesn’t, though, and it’s her hand that lightly brushes his - only brushes, then skims her fingtertips so gently across his knuckles that Enjolras shivers, skin afire, his mouth suddenly dry.

“I want,” she says quietly, “to dance.”

Enjolras glances at her warily, wondering if, in her roundabout way, she’s asking him to join her. “Dance, then,” he suggests reasonably, and Éponine rolls her eyes.

“I want to dance _with_ someone. I’m…God, I’m wild tonight.” At his crooked eyebrow (he doesn’t mean to look so amused, he can’t help it) she shrugs, “don’t give me that look: I don’t know what’s up.”

And with a soft groan she pushes from the table and throws her arms out - grasping at stars or fireflies or the still night itself, he can’t tell, but it’s good enough to stand and observe as she twirls, slowly, gracefully, one foot trailing across the ground as the other twists until after a moment she gives a heavy sigh and looks at him with eyes like universes.

One hand curls out to beckon him closer but before Enjolras can move she’s walking toward him, putting herself between his knees and resting her hands on his chest.

“No good,” she breathes, shaky.

“No,” he agrees in a voice no steadier than hers, and then - _“good”_ \- and there’s no conscious thought behind what he does next: only instinct, and the very best kind.

One hand settles in the curve of her hip while the other lifts to glide over her cheek and settle there, and Enjolras leans in to press his lips to Éponine’s in an ungainly kiss. It’s slow and clumsy but intoxicating in its sweetness, and before he can pull away (he’s second-guessing himself before he’s even done kissing her, not that he thinks he could ever be done because kissing Éponine is not something one can ever get tired of and for all his self-control Enjolras is as susceptible as the next man when he lets himself be) her hands are on either side of his head, tangling in his hair and tightening hard enough to make him _growl…_

It’s that sound that makes her pull back, smirking slightly, to look in him the eye before she drags her hands through his hair to link behind his neck, still grinning when he shivers under the teasing imprint of her fingernails in his skin.

He resolves to wipe the smirk from her face and darts in again to claim her mouth with a touch more _bite_. It’s hardly elegant, all clattering teeth and crushed lips but he doesn’t care and God knows she probably likes it; she’s enjoying it immensely going by the way her fingers dig into the back of his neck and she leans in, her body a heady sigh moulding to the shape of him.

Inside the music stops briefly. There’s the sound of shuffling chairs before it picks up again in a new song, and after a moment Éponine pulls away to glance over her shoulder. Grantaire stands in the doorway.

He looks cautious - something a little harder to identify flits across his face and disappears before Enjolras can put a name to it - but Éponine is already holding out her hand to him, breaking away from Enjolras’ arms only so far as to show she means it.

“R,” her voice is gentle but insistent, inviting (in a strange way it sounds like an order, Enjolras isn’t sure how she can make a name sound like a command and a plea all at once but it would make things a hell of a lot easier for him in group meetings if he knew how to do it) and Grantaire doesn’t even need to ask to know what she wants.

Maybe he wants it too, maybe it’s what he hopes for: there’s need in his eyes as he crosses the little courtyard to join them at the table. Mutely he takes up Éponine’s hand in his own and her breath hitches audibly when he brushes his lips over her knuckles, but his blue eyes are on Enjolras, who only stares - stares and so witnesses the exact moment when the hesitant desire in Grantaire’s gaze turns to lust.

Lost for words, the fairer of the trio can do nothing but watch as Grantaire tugs Éponine from between his knees and draws her into an embrace so shameless it would make Courf blush: Enjolras can only observe as the two lose themselves in one another, Grantaire kissing hard enough to bruise and Éponine revelling in it, uncurling herself against him as if she were some hard-won god accepting tributes to her altar, tributes of blood and flesh and single-minded devotion…

And everyone knows gods are insatiable, so Enjolras really shouldn’t be surprised when her arm shoots out and closes around his shirt collar to drag him forward.

Grantaire lowers his attentions to the arcing line of her jaw, trailing kisses and nips downward and Éponine _moans_ as his mouth finds some sensitive place on her skin, she’s trembling but Enjolras is there behind her (she can feel him against her and his obvious desire is just one more smirk playing across her lips, one more arrogant smile, she plays the part of the god perfectly) claiming each little delighted gasp with teeth and tongue and kisses hard enough to make her glad she’s pinned between them because she’s fairly sure her knees can’t support her. Enjolras lifts one hand from her hip to grip Grantaire’s arm, half-surprised at the muscle there beneath the shirt - how often he forgets just how strong the artist really is, how his pastimes include more than drinking himself into oblivion - but he knows he’ll have time now to memorise every inch of him, of them both because they’re his: she’s his and she’s Grantaire’s and they’re both so _obviously_ hers.

He wonders if he would ever have had the courage to do this - to approach Grantaire - if Éponine hadn’t decided that she loved both of them too much to want to choose.


	2. of summer days and ease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Picnics or cuddles or just something really cute."
> 
> Courfeyrac's away and Enjolras is hostile, so Éponine, Combeferre and Jehan decide to spend a day away from the others.

She hadn’t intended to fall asleep on his couch. No one ever does, but it still happens: nights in become nights over because everybody knows Combeferre is too kind to kick anyone out, and will happily let the inevitable strays sleep on his settee - so long as they don’t disturb him when he has an early shift, or use all his hot water in the morning. Then, he tends not to be so amenable.

Courfeyrac learned that once when he managed to do _both_ , waking Combeferre in the early hours one day with what he’d later described as “a spectacular in-shower rendition of the _I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”_. To this day the latter only has to glare at Courf in a certain way to leave him wincing, though no one’s actually sure what Combeferre did to engender such a lasting reaction in their cheery friend - and no matter how curious they are, no one’s brave or mad enough to find out.

The first smudge of grey morning light finds Éponine uncoiling from an uncomfortable position on the settee, her slender form elongating into a sinuous stretch until the tips of her bare toes peek over the far arm of the couch and her fingers curl and waggle in the air above her, getting the blood flowing through limbs that’ve spent the past four hours twisted beneath her torso. Sitting up, she rolls her neck and shivers when the bones _click-clack_ , before swinging her legs around onto the floor and rising unsteadily.

Automatically she shuffles across to the window. They’d forgotten to close the curtains before turning in (flopping down, in her case) last night, and it’s always been sort of a ritual for her to stand and watch the dawn on the days when she’s awake to see it.

It’s chilly in the flat - Combeferre runs warmer than most, so he never has the heating on, whereas she’s positively reptilian and will run at room temperature or lower if she’s not careful - so Éponine scoops up her old green hoodie and tugs it on, drawing it close around her torso with arms folded snugly against her waist as she leans her forehead against the window. Her breath fogs the glass, blurring the advance of the dawn across the sky; slow streaks of sunrise paint the skyline in variegated shades of amber and blue as pale wisps of cloud roll through an entire cosmos of colours, until the indigos of night bleed into the brilliant conflagration of morning, lemon and rose and ochre and red flame at its glowing core.

Éponine feels it on her skin, light and warm. Her eyes fall closed - and she is aware of a quiet presence beside her.

A hand slides a mug of tea towards her along the windowsill, steaming up the glass as her own breath had done, and she pulls way from the window to smile gratefully at Combeferre. She hadn’t realised he was even awake but he seems relatively bright-eyed for the early hour, a familiar figure in his old grey slacks and red tee-shirt.

“I didn’t think you had work today?” Éponine makes a question of the statement, and he shakes his head as he sips at his mug (no doubt containing some obnoxiously healthy herbal concoction that offers a multitude of benefits to the blood stream or skin but none of the comforts of a proper brew). She raises her own to her lips and sighs contentedly as its warmth floods through her: he doesn’t usually drink it himself but Combeferre makes a damn good builder’s tea, and unlike most of the other _amis_ , remembers just how she likes it.

“I don’t,” he explains, “but the weather’s supposed to be nice today, so I thought we could do something.”

“What, Jehan too?” She glances over her shoulder, across the living room to where the poet still dozes on the other couch - the bigger one, capable of containing his habit of flinging his limbs out every which way in his sleep.

Courfeyrac’s been away for a week and won’t return for another six days, and Jehan has taken to staying over with his friends rather than spend the fortnight his own empty flat. No one minds, and it’s better than watching him pine for Courf (it’s a generally-accepted fact that _anything_ is better than a melancholy Jehan). For the past two nights he’s has been sleeping at Combeferre’s and from what Éponine’s seen the pair get on almost _too_ well, the flat slowly transforming into an idyll of strange-smelling teas and the quiet strains of Enya.

It’s nice enough to spend an afternoon here, but another six hours would probably drive Éponine off her box and over to Bahorel’s for a wild night on the lash.

She doesn’t turn back to see Combeferre’s response but she can hear faint amusement - and something else, not so easy to place - in his voice when he replies, “sure, if he gets up. I was thinking maybe we could take lunch along to the park or something? Last night was kind of intense, some fresh air might be good…”

Éponine snorts, privately thinking that Combeferre can be as measured in tone as he likes but last night wasn’t _kind of_ anything - it was all hostile, loud and entirely exhausting, but what else is to be expected when Grantaire and Enjolras get into a ‘discussion’ on the long-term worth of charity versus social security? (Naturally Grantaire scorns the practical value of either, refusing to believe that man could ever create a sustainable system for preventing poverty.)

“That sounds lovely. Let me nab a shower and I’ll help you make the picnic.”

-

Jehan gets himself up and ready in time to accompany them to the park, tripping along at Éponine’s side in his lilac drainpipes, plum-coloured shirt and sea-blue waistcoat, his long, curly hair plaited by Éponine’s deft hands while her own hair dried. There’s a green ribbon woven into the braid today.

The two of them walk along together quite happily in the sunny morning, joined hands swinging back and forth as Jehan natters away about this and that - pointedly not mentioning Courfeyrac’s absence, she notes, which is hardly surprising. Behind his light-hearted tone he’s probably composing a sonnet or two for Courf’s return and far be it for Éponine to distract him from the Muse’s song.

She lets him direct the conversation, making only a token effort not to listen to the phone call going on a few metres behind them.

Combeferre keeps some distance between himself and the others as he endures what sounds like a highly-irate call from Enjolras: it can hardly be called a conversation, since his half of the call seems to consist of weary nodding, remembering that Enjolras can’t see it and sighing _yes…I know…yes…look, I understand, will you calm down? No, I’m not busy…_ and it continues for close to ten minutes, until Éponine decides she can no longer stand to hear the irritation in Combeferre’s voice. It’s not like him, and she knows Enjolras will only be taking his frustrations out on his good-natured friend so when she glances over her shoulder and observes the annoyance writ plain on his face, she doesn’t even hesitate: slipping away from Jehan, she strides back to pluck the phone from Combeferre’s hand and end the call without another word to Enjolras.

Combeferre glares at her, but she simply hands him the phone and waits for him to pocket it.

“Not today,” she tells him, “you look shocking. Doesn’t he, Jehan?”

Prouvaire has joined them by now and stands at her side, studying Combeferre with gentle eyes the colour of cornflowers. “I think _tired_ is the word she’s looking for. You look _tired_ ,” he amends helpfully, reaching out to rub Combeferre’s arm in a consolatory manner. “Enjolras will cope without you for a day, mate.”

At the other’s sceptically-crooked eyebrow, Jehan snorts delicately.

“It’s only a day. Even _I_ lasted a day without Courf before I decided to come haunt your places, and Enjolras doesn’t have the excuse of being in love with you. So come on. Let’s go and forget that our friends are some of the most highly-strung, argumentative people in Paris - we can throw food at ducks and cloud-gaze and people-watch and…all those lovely things…”

The corner of Combeferre’s mouth curves up a little smile at that, so Jehan leans in to plant a kiss on his cheek before he and Éponine link arms with their more sombre friend and tow him on down the road, refusing to allow Enjolras’ foul mood to affect anyone else (though it is odd, Éponine considers, that it should last this long. Usually after a fight with Grantaire he’ll be surly for a while, but never so vocal in his anger toward the other man whose presence he continues to resent. Maybe there’s something else going on…but no, it’s a matter for tomorrow. Combeferre wants a pleasant day, and she’ll give it him). A little space to breathe it’s something the three of them all need.

Though as it turns out, it’s not so much the three of them spending the morning together as it is Jehan instructing them to walk on without him once they reach the park.

After assuring them that he’ll find them again in time for lunch, the poet makes a beeline for a sturdy oak with wide-spreading branches and pulls out his notebook, unfolding the yellow-and-white checked blanket they brought along and settling quietly in the dappled shade cast upon the grass - a softer glow than the fierce golden light beyond the shelter of the tree.

Jehan casts a ponderous gaze about him from the vantage point of his verdant bower, but as he leans back against the trunk his eyes fall closed within seconds: he looks content enough, so Éponine allows Combeferre to lead her along the path away from him.

They walk in a companionable sort of silence, her hand falling from his arm to sway at her side while she wanders ahead a ways, and Combeferre finds himself watching her as he would a dancer. She’s always had a slight touch of rolling fluidity to her gait; he would describe it as something like a saunter were her movements not so deliberately compact and inward-focussed, barely a trace of the arrogance that can spark in her eyes at times. In her life Éponine has learned to take up as little room as possible - flitting from shadow to hollow rather than stalking the light, but she lives in the light now and she can’t keep the sway from her hips as she walks. In the past few years, free from a past where secrecy meant survival, she’s come to expand herself into spaces beyond the small pocket taken up by her body - be it the sable ripples of her hair fanning out around her and glinting copper in the sun, or her arms gesticulating to illustrate her stumbling points, lacking eloquences because she utters them before she’s even done thinking them at times. She is altogether too big for herself sometimes, and he loves it about her.

He loves it in the same way that he loves Courfeyrac’s laughter (the swiftest way to soothe Enjolras' temper and put an end to the ceaseless bickering) or he loves the lilt in Musichetta’s voice when she sings as she clears up at the end of a night. The same way he loves how well they all work together, on those blessed rare occasions when they do work together.

…absolutely the same way…

But then Éponine tosses a careless glance over her shoulder, an easy smile alight upon her features, and it’s enough to have him entirely unsure of his own convictions.

“You’re dawdling,” she points out mildly, keeping her own pace and forcing Combeferre to quicken his own to catch up.

This time when they stroll side-by-side she lets her hand fall to skim the back of his own lightly - so lightly, so fleetingly it could be unwitting if he didn’t know that Éponine does not touch by accident. When it comes to her relationships with other people she’s calculated and she is thoughtful, reckless only when she’s sure of herself and sod the rest, and if she’s moving closer to him then she’s doing so deliberately, confident enough in her own feelings (or whims) to care nothing for the possibility that he might not share them.

_Where she's concerned, how could such a possibility exist?_

It inspires a warm kind of courage in his chest, and so with the sun aglow on the back of his neck and her smile a fair thing at his side Combeferre waits until the lazy swing of her arm brings it back within reach and snags her hand from the air, sliding his fingers between her own and perfectly aligning their palms. Her skin is cool, but the soft smile playing across her lips is lovely and his - only his.

She meets his gaze only once after that and they both break the eye contact with idiotic grins on their faces: Éponine even giggles, and Combeferre nudges her gently with his shoulder, prompting her to warn that _I’ll shove you in the lake if you’re not careful, Monsieur,_ and him to return with a smirk that _I’ll take you in with me, Mademoiselle._

If he’s still smiling like a fool when their path brings them around the lake and back to Prouvaire’s post under the tree, she doesn’t seem to notice, and if her step is lighter than he’s seen it in a long time when she skips over to the oak and spreads out her skirt over the picnic blanket, it only makes him smile wider.

And if Jehan wakes from his sun-induced slumber in time to witness Éponine leaning over and planting a slow kiss on Combeferre’s mouth, the poet doesn’t say a thing.


	3. don't put me down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For nyxierose, who requested "something from Éponine's perspective inspired by La Roux's "Bulletproof".

**i. I’m having fun, don’t put me down**

She’s light-headed and the club is whirling around her as she laughs in Feuilly’s arms - his hands are knotted at the small of her back and her legs are locked tight around his hips and he’s spinning her, faster and faster with each dizzying revolution - but she can still feel Enjolras’ red-hot stare, prickling along the ridges of her spine from where he sits in their booth (alone, of course, guarding it while the rest of them dance and looking faintly murderous about it). He’s seething, and Éponine knows it’s directed at her, but the sour glare on his face only makes her dig her heels in and smile wider because damn it, she’s not here to suffer his disapproval. 

They fought yesterday, but she doesn’t want to think about it.

Feuilly takes a hand from her back and throws it out just to prove that he can, holding her against him with only one and grinning when Éponine panics and clasps her own hands around his neck to keep herself secure. After a moment, reckless and brave and more than a little merry, she lets go again and flings her arms out (nearly whacking some passing stranger who has the foresight to dodge) spinning and spinning and laughing and out of the corner of her eye she sees Enjolras get up and storm out of the club.

Breathless, Feuilly gradually slows and staggers over to the now-vacant booth: the pair of them collapse in a mess of arms and long hair, chests heaving, and he lifts a hand to push her sweat-damp fringe back from her face.

When he speaks, it’s without judgement or criticism, and she knows it’s meant kindly.

“I think you should speak to him, Ép.”

**ii. Messages I tried to send**

_I’ve tried,_ she nearly says. _I’ve tried dozens of times, do you really think I’d avoid him? Do you think I’d choose things to be this way?_ She loves Enjolras with every inch of her capability to do so, and now she’s certain of it she has no plans to shy from it - she initiated things, way back when, and she’s always been the more courageous of the two in their relationship. But for the past fortnight she has been nothing but scared.

Pushing herself up from Feuilly’s chest, she follows Enjolras from the dark space and hopes the sick feeling in her stomach isn’t prophetic.

By the time she catches up with him, striding up the stairs to the doors as if he’s every intention of going straight home without her, she’s probably as angry as he is. When she reaches his side she doesn’t announce herself - one hand flies out to snag him by the shoulder and jerk him around, shoving him back a few steps with the aggression of the motion. For a split second he actually looks surprised at the sight of his furious… _what even are we? Can I still call him mine?_

“Talk to me,” she spits out, imploring, “don’t fuck around like this.”

His eyes flash and his nostrils flare (she can read his mood in his face as easily as she can from his words most of the time. He’s never lied to her, mainly because he _can’t_ and he knows it) but if Enjolras notices her wince involuntarily at the anger that radiates from him, he gives no sign.

“I’m not the one fucking around,” he snarls, “where’ve you been, Éponine? You were gone _ten days.”_

_Ten days without a word. Ten days of nothing but anxiety on his part._

“I had things to sort out,” she defends herself, fists clenched at her sides. “I tried to tell you. I tried time and time again but you had your fucking rally to organise and no time for anyone else.”

“That’s not tr-“

“Is it not?” she cuts him off with a scowl, “when have I _ever_ not told you something important?”

She has him there. For the first few months (before she learned to trust him) Éponine had been reticent to the point of curtness around him and he’d wondered how this could possibly be the same sweet, friendly girl Marius would talk about before he introduced her to the group. A while down the line and there was no doubt about it: most of the time it’s nigh impossible to get her to shut up.

The day before she left, twelve days ago now, she’d fallen silent.

That should have been his clue.

**iii. Dirty words come out to play when you are hurt**

“You didn’t call,” he offers into the quiet that swells between them, filling a space he’s only now realising has pushed the two of them apart. He wants to reach out and bring her back where he can feel her chilly little heart beating hummingbird-wing tattoos against his chest, but he’s not sure she won’t flinch away from him if he tries. “You didn’t text, nothing. I didn’t know what to think - I thought you’d gone back to Montfermeil or something.”

“Why? Because of one phone call?”

He hates the scorn in her eyes, the hardened refusal to concede that anything of her old life remains in the new.

“Your mother-“

“Is gone. I wasn’t in Montfermeil. I wouldn’t go running back someplace for something that isn’t there anymore.”

_Wouldn’t you?_

He’s standing on the edge, and it’s the memory of waking to find her gone - without a word, without a note, and the spiteful edge to her laughter tonight as she dances with other people and spares him barely a look after ten days - that pushes him over. He and Éponine have burned to fiercely and too brilliantly together; Enjolras has hoped sometimes that they’ll last forever, that this means as much to her as it does to him, but perhaps they were always destined to end up coming apart at the seams and able to do nothing about it but watch.

“Then why’d you come back here?”

Over the edge, over and into the hollow darkness of her stare as she takes an unconscious step back from him and the airless space between them turns cold. Enjolras couldn’t cross the distance now if he tried.

Her gaze hardens, her eyes pinpricks of oil-slick shadow in the amber-tinged glow of the street, lightless vacuum-eyes, eyes like every bad dream he’s ever had, and just like that she’s gone from him.

He’s done it this time.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. Maybe her lip trembles, but she won’t cry in front of him. Not anymore. That’s Grantaire’s domain now, he realises, as it was before all this.

It’s no longer his place to comfort Éponine.

How easily it ends. The easiest thing in the world: slipping through his fingers like the rainfall he never saw coming.

**iv. now I’m much too proud**

“What’d he do to get you back here?” Courfeyrac mocks gently, offering the seat beside him to Éponine while simultaneously nudging Grantaire with his elbow. She only smiles, but her eyes flick almost imperceptibly over to Enjolras - and even that fleeting glance feels like an indulgence, when he sits there so relaxed and so calm and her own skin is afire with wave upon wave of a fear she’s never felt before.

She’s never played this role, the uncomfortable ex, and she has no intention of starting now. She went out of her way to reject it and refused to make their separation a war between friends; refused to allow the boys to choose sides and simply walked away. It was easier for her to abandon the Musain than it would’ve been for him.

The last four years have been filled with upheaval on every level of her life and she hasn’t been back here in all that time: the Corinthe has become her haunt, favoured by Grantaire anyway because the bartenders aren’t as familiar with him as ‘Chetta is so they tend to forget his misdemeanours. She sees the _amis_ all the time still, even Enjolras when they’re all together at parties, but their table at the café has always seemed more intimate. His domain, not hers.

Little about the Musain has changed. Feuilly’s graffiti’d declaration of _“vivent les peuples!”_ on the wall remains, scrawled below the ornate fan he’d made for Musichetta’s birthday. The bonny rope of tricolour rosettes hangs over the mirror above the boys’ customary table - she’d helped them make it one afternoon when they were feeling particularly patriotic. She remembers tangling Courfeyrac up in it, and he’d gone over to where Enjolras sat and put on a show of unwrapping it from his body like a striptease, sniggering all the while at the slow rise of a scarlet blush across the other’s cheeks. She’d resolved to inspire the same effect in him later that night, she recalls with a faint smile.

Even Joly’s in the same seat as always. Éponine looks about her and the memories are as clear as the evening light, helped by the fact that Musichetta never redecorates or rearranges the place.

No, things haven’t changed. It’s only her.

But she keeps her smile in place (it’s not hard, Bahorel is telling her about how Laigle tripped up the stairs and chipped a tooth a few days ago and even Bossuet himself is grinning at the story because the last time he’d done that, he’d broken his nose, so clearly the evil genius is feeling generous) and she doesn’t avoid looking at Enjolras. She even gives a little smile just for him when their eyes meet, because she is proud and she misses him and while she’s not one for heaping blame on herself, everything that happened between them was, really, her fault.

It’s why she’s here tonight: to tell him everything.

Four years have lent her perspective.

She loves him still, she needs him to know the truth, nothing more.

The years have given her armour too.

**v. I’ll never let you sweep me off my feet**

It was Éponine that pursued him, when they first started going together. She hadn’t wanted love, only to test herself and in a way, use him - use Enjolras with his ferocity and his somewhat humourless nature to slice away the bonds that held her to Marius. That was her goal, when she found him mid-brood in the kitchen at one of Courf’s flat parties (he’s always denied that he broods, he’s not _broody_ , but in a group of daydreamers and philosophers Éponine has learned to tell the difference between contemplation and a plain old brown study). She was brave on liquor and breathtaking in her fearlessness, and it took no more than her fingers running lightly through his curly hair for Enjolras to snatch up her hands, rise from his chair and push her back against a wall to remove Marius from her thoughts in a manner more akin to scorching than severing. How she hummed into his mouth upon learning that this creature of political fervour, so intense and devoted to the elevation and liberation of man, is no less impassioned when something more physical required his _devotions._

Devoted or no she never wanted to fall for him, and it was the terror that she might actually be doing so that drove her to flee and hole up at Grantaire’s for ten days to try and figure it out.

**vi. this time I’ll be bulletproof**

“I wasn’t in Montfermeil,” he turns to the sound of her, voice a soft rasp and so much missed. For years she kept her promise to stay away, to never give him the chance to ask again why she’s there because obviously she could never love him enough to linger on his account, but tonight she just…wanders in with Jehan and Grantaire as if she hasn’t avoided the place all this time, and Enjolras has found himself wishing, with every fibre of his being, that he hadn’t been so caught up in planning that one damn rally.

“No,” he watches her walk toward him, hair stained bloody in the sunset, and words fail him. _I know, I know, Grantaire told me…_

“I was with R,” she continues, “for ten days. Hiding. I was a fucking coward.”

He shakes his head but she’s finding her feet now, explanations four years overdue spilling from her lips and filling the air between them - that space that somehow seems more malleable than he remembers. It would be so easy to reach out…

“Yes, I was, I was…”

Her words wash away the poison that lingers in her bones and she holds her head higher with every breath because at last the lie is done. Not even a lie, a gross omission - a betrayal, because he never deserved it and it’s too late to make amends.

No, she was never in Montfermeil. She hadn’t even left the city. Éponine hadn’t gone back to Montparnasse or her father or any of the shadow-men from Before, and she wasn’t sulking because Enjolras hadn’t been paying attention to her, so consumed was he by his activist work. She had been, quite simply, hiding. Hiding from him because she was in love with him and she knew (feared) that they were drifting apart, keeping different hours and talking less and fighting more, and hating herself for running because he’d called Grantaire half a dozen times in the first two days and she had to listen while her best friend lied for her; protected her from her own stupidity and responded to Enjolras’ demands with vagueness - until she realised on the fourth day that he must only have accepted the painter’s hedging because he was so distracted by worry for her.

The image of him fretting over her nearly sent her running back to him, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. It wasn’t the first time she had disappeared on her friends (she has a habit of it, in fact) but it was the first time she’d gone without warning. _I tried to tell him_ , she’d repeated to herself over and over again, for all the good it did. She’d fucked off and left him for nearly two weeks, there was no justifying that.

She’d spent most of the time alone with her thoughts on Grantaire’s couch, filtering and arguing with herself because with her romantic history in mind she doesn’t much trust her own feelings anymore. It didn’t take her ten days to realise that she was inescapably in love with Enjolras, but she’d already known at that point that he would never feel the same way and there was a high enough chance that their relationship was on its last legs anyway, so that night she and Grantaire drank themselves into a stupor and it most definitely _did_ take her that long to recover from the hangover.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathes, crossing toward him, “I’m so, so sorry I didn’t leave a note, or answer the phone. I’m sorry I was a dick at the club, and I’m sorry I let us fall apart. I…I loved you, and I needed you to know, but when I got back we fought and then again at the club and then it didn’t matter because you-” she gives a hiccuping sob and presses a hand to her side as if it pains her, “-you asked me why I’d even come back and what was the point in telling you I loved you when you didn’t think there was anything there - I’m just sorry, that’s all I wanted to say,” she finishes hesitantly, reminding herself that whatever happens, she’s tough enough to get over it.

_Armour, remember?_

“I loved you too,” is all he says, eyes dark with barely-contained sorrow. “You were so quiet in the days before you left -or I thought you were anyway - I thought you were getting ready to leave. And then you did, and when you came back…” he remembers the way she’d strolled in as if she’d only been out to the shops, and he can tell she’s remembering too. “I didn’t feel like much, like I mattered, when you could walk out and not think of me for a fortnight.”

She’s scarcely a foot from him now and her brow crumples at that. “Oh, God, Enjolras, when I was with R I did nothing _but_ think of you. I was tearing my hair out trying to work things through and I know I should’ve done it with you - talked to you, I know that now. But I came home because I knew that I love you. It was just…too late.”

Éponine looks up to find him staring at her.

“Love?” he repeats cautiously, and she realises.

“Yes.” They’re beyond lies now: it doesn’t matter enough to bother lying about. “I love you. I always have. Maybe I always will. I don’t know. I know I see you around a lot but I’ve missed having you with me, I’ve missed waking up beside you or hearing you bitch about me using all the hot water, or - or telling me about the work you had going on, I loved to hear about it…I was as happy with you as I’ve ever been and I regret it a little more every day that I let it go.”

 _What a fucking mess,_ thinks Éponine sadly, stepping back before he can respond. “Not that it does any good,” she adds heavily, “I just needed you to know the truth. Give me one night of selfishness, then we can pretend this never happened.”

She turns to leave, suddenly embarrassed by the real honesty of her confession, but Enjolras’ hand is on her arm and he’s pulling her back gently and looking at her as if he’s discovered an entirely new element in her dark eyes…

“I love you too, Ép,” murmurs he. Words she never thought to hear, never expected. Words she refuses to let drag her down now. “I do. And for everything - I’m sorry too. I…”

Éponine tugs her arm from his grip.

_You will not give me the chance to hurt us again._

One last apology, she won’t kiss the corner of his mouth though she longs to do it, because she knows that if she does she won’t be able to stop herself.

_You will not hurt me._

She reminds herself that she has lived through poverty and hunger and it’s given her steel for skin, that with Enjolras the world was a capricious game of chance and while living in the flames as they did, it was inevitable that they should one day burn. It would only happen again, if she were to succumb.

_This way I can’t hurt you either._

She leaves him there and she walks, because in four years she’s learned to love him without needing him - to put it away and forget and it’s easier this time because the words that festered inside her are spent. He captivated her with his own words, with his eloquence and his convictions, but if she wants someone to talk to about politics she has Combeferre, and if she wants someone to fuck her like she’s the living, breathing personification of everything that inspires him, well…she and Bahorel have always got on, and his ideals are far less lofty.

_Love without need. Where did your heart go, ‘Ponine?_

She is alone when she returns to the flat, but she doesn’t hurt too much, and when she sleeps and wakes and rises in the morning, she does not think of him again.


	4. we don't do this for the money

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which les amis are archaeologists in training, and Combeferre might be falling in love.

The familiar, everyday sounds of the ongoing dig mask her approach, but Combeferre knows he’s no longer alone in his (relatively) quiet corner of the field when the sharp-edged slant of her shadow falls across the millstone he’s been freeing from its two-thousand-year tomb.

She stands a few feet away from him with her hands on her hips - he can see them silhouetted against the earth, jutting out from her body and in again like the handles of a particularly angular kantharos - and says nothing for at least half a minute, simply observing him as he with painstaking patience carves his way around the eroded stone with the very tip of his trowel.

She doesn’t seem to approve of his excavating methods: after a while she remarks (and he can almost _hear_ her rolling her eyes along with it), “you are ridiculous, y’know that?”

“I believe you’ve mentioned it once or twice before,” he replies mildly, then: “you’re in my light.”

Her shadow slides across the earth as she comes to sit beside him on the turf they’ve yet to clear away, her head cocked to one side as she continues to watch him work. He glances up at her, wondering what this peculiar slip of a girl could want (Éponine only ever wants something, he’s not fool enough to imagine she’d come and sit with him for any other reason) and it’s only when he sees the clipboard laid flat on her knees that he recalls she and Joly have been tasked with filling out the context sheets this morning. She doesn’t seem to be writing anything down, though, so he figures she’s just taking the chance to skive off for a while.

Combeferre doesn’t blame her: this is his first proper experience on a dig site and already he knows that paperwork is hands-down the most tedious part.

“The thing’s still half-buried,” Éponine carries on as if he hadn’t spoken, her slim fingers curling around the edge of the clipboard, “why don’t you actually dig it out, rather than just picking at it?”

“He wants it left in situ, I’m just clearing it up a bit,” Combeferre leans back on his haunches to better look at her, and she beams brightly at him from under her wide-brimmed hat - nicked from Bahorel going by the cricket logo on the front. Her dark hair is pulled up underneath it but tendrils fly free to frame her face, and there’s a smudge of dirt on the left side of her lower jaw.

He wouldn’t say that they’re particularly good friends, even though they’re going to be living together next year - the group have managed to find three flats in the same house and Combeferre isn’t sure whether he should be looking forward to it or dreading the prospect of sharing a living space with this crowd - but there’s something inescapably likeable about her, and he knows she wouldn’t give him the time of day if she wasn’t fond of him.

(As a matter of fact, just as it had only taken Combeferre half an hour to decide that he liked the wild-eyed girl with the skinny ankles and the charming smile, so it had taken a single evening for Éponine to realise that he was a boy she’d like to know better. That was nearly eight months ago now.)

“Shouldn’t you be doing something?” he enquires, not unkindly, “work, perhaps?”

She crosses her legs and rests her elbows on her knees, letting the clipboard slip down into her lap as she grins. “Yes. I should be recording soil colour and viscosity and the depth you’re digging at. But if I were to actually _do_ that, rather than sit here and chat, then you could rest assured that you were probably the most boring person to ever bore. So really, me not working is a compliment.”

He can’t help but laugh at that, and her smile really is an infectious one. Even shaded by the brim of the hat her eyes glint darkly with humour, flicking here-and-there over him as if he’s a more interesting study than any find upon the field.

“You’re burning,” she comments just as he’s about to return to work (that millstone won’t uncover itself…). “Forget your sun cream?”

“As if Joly’d let me,” Combeferre snorts, raising one hand to rub the back of his neck where, sure enough, his skin feels hot enough that surely it must be _glowing_ , and likely a fetching carnation-pink colour to boot. “I put it on, it just doesn’t _work_. It’s my hat I forgot.”

Naturally pale, prone to freckles and burning both, while Éponine’s darker skin remains its usual lovely tan untouched by sunburn (though there is a delicious dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose that suggests she’s been more lax with the sunscreen than he has), Combeferre’s own has been growing pinker by the day.

Éponine laughs softly at his plight but takes mercy on him, plucking the hat from her head to sling it over his own and tugging it down from the back to cover his exposed neck - Combeferre freezes as her arm reaches over his shoulder; she’s so close to him now that every lash shadowing her half-lidded brown eyes is cast in sharp detail for him; he can make out the faint sheen of sweat on her brow, each flake of dirt on her jawbone and the slight imprint left in her forehead by the hat…and he averts his gaze quickly, inestimably glad that he’s already pink enough to hide the rising blush on his cheeks.

She moves away, her eyes roving over his face again and a slow, teasing smile curving across her mouth (and he’s not a hundred percent sure but he could swear her hand lingers just a little _too_ long on the side of his neck when she draws it back).

“Back to work, you,” says Éponine lightly. She rises smoothly to her feet and bounds away along the edge of the trench clipboard in hand, leaving Combeferre hunkered down in two-thousand-year-old dirt and quite seriously fearing he might have sunstroke.

Either that, or a uniquely localised whirlwind just passed through and left him alone reeling in its wake.


	5. we do it for the thrill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Archaeologists AU, cont.

Combeferre doesn’t so much as look up when she enters the hut, pushing sweat-slicked hair up from the back of her neck to allow the faintest whisper of a non-existence breeze to cool her skin, and taking advantage of his concentration to watch her friend work.

Normally she wouldn’t envy the person who gets stuck indoors cataloguing the day’s finds - but normally, given this is the north of England in June, it’s not so goddamn blisteringly hot outside that they have to take an hour’s siesta to shelter from the worst of it. In here, protected from the midday sun by thick walls and wide windows in the cabin the site director has co-opted as their base of operations, Combeferre has the best job going and Éponine can’t help but wish she were in his place (in fact the rest of the group - stuck outside on the grass under an awning - would probably re-enact _Battle Royale_ for the chance to catalogue pot sherds right now, and she’s not so sure she wouldn’t join in).

“Hot out there?” he enquires without glancing up, scribbling something down on a clear plastic baggie and sealing it carefully.

“Un-fucking-bearable. Need a hand?” Éponine can’t disguise the hope in her voice as she crosses the room, leaning on the table to peer over his shoulder and inspect his morning’s work.

“Off,” he instructs, gesturing with his pen for her to take her weight off the rickety trestle in case it collapses (not that she weighs enough to so much as wobble it, but he’s spent the past four hours organising the sherds currently laid out across the table and even his mild temper might explode if it all ended up on the floor).

“Sorry. But seriously, ‘Ferre, I think I might die out in that heat. Give me something to do in here?”

Drawing out the _“here”_ into a pleading whine, Éponine nudges him pointedly with her shoulder and Combeferre smiles as he finally looks up at her, taking in her frazzled appearance and slightly desperate expression. It’s barely even noon and she looks exhausted, an impression further given when she leans in and rests her head on his arm, sagging against his side.

“Go ask Bossuet,” he suggests kindly, touching his forehead to hers for a moment. It might just be his imagination - even shielded by four walls and a roof he hasn’t escaped the worst of the weather, and there’s something singularly disorientating about Éponine’s presence (disorientating, as in it feels like fucking heatstroke and today of all days he’s not so sure it isn’t) - but she seems to lean into the contact, her damp hair warm against his brow. ”There isn’t much to do in here but he might have something over under the old wall.”

She nods. “I will. God…” and she lets out a gusty sigh as she pulls back from him, dragging her dark hair up into a bun and replacing her lurid green bandanna over the top, tugging the knot tighter. “Summer digs are the absolute worst.”

“Agreed,” Combeferre takes up his pen and turns back to the table, attempting to clear his mind of the sweet-scented fog her proximity seems to fill his head with. He doesn't succeed.

(It feels like they’ve been dancing around one another for weeks: Éponine’s dark gaze will land on him every so often when they’re all together, only to flit away as soon as he catches her looking and avoid him until she’s sure he’s moved on. She blows hot and cold and fierce with every passing whim and her behaviour is entirely confusing…and entirely intoxicating.)

“Forecast’s meant to be cooler tomorrow, though,” he tells her, “and if you ask Bossuet now he might put you in here.”

“True,” she smiles, “and you’ll be the one sweating like a pig in the sun, and I’ll have no mercy on any of you.”

Combeferre laughs at that. “You sweet thing, you. But I’ll be digging under the walls tomorrow anyway - there’s loads of shade over there, I don’t need your mercy.”

“Hmph,” Éponine flashes him a grin as she turns toward the door, slim brown fingers trailing over the flaking brown paint of the wall beside it. “Well, I’m gonna go find Bossuet, and then maybe catch a tan - and by that I mean I’m going to lie on the terrace and slowly bake. Keep us poor souls in your thoughts.”

“Will do,” Combeferre calls after her lightly as she wanders away to locate the PhD student in charge of the dig today. Watching her go, he wonders how many more times Éponine is going to walk away from him - how many more times he’ll let her - before he finds the courage to tell her that of _course_ she’ll be in his thoughts.

He doesn’t have a choice in the matter, where she’s concerned.


End file.
